It’s good for business How to get the most out of your food hygiene rating

Congratulations! You have achieved the top food hygiene rating. Now it’s time to start reaping some of the benefits. Here are some tips that can help you make the most of your rating.

At your restaurant, café or takeaway First of all, make sure you display your food hygiene rating sticker in a place where your customers can see it easily, for example in a window or on your door. Research shows that people are now looking out for it. So if it can be seen before entering the premises, it reassures your customers that you take food hygiene seriously. If you’ve lost your sticker, speak to your local authority food safety officer who can provide you with a new one.

Menu Menus are a great place to advertise your food hygiene rating. So, whether your menu is on the table, in the window, on a board outside or online, you should be proud to show off your rating. To help, we have some images showing your rating that you can download and use.

Website Your website is also a good place to promote your hygiene rating. To help you get started we have a web banner that you can download, or you can embed your rating on your website using the FSA ‘widget’. Information about this can be found in your business’s entry on food.gov.uk/ratings.

Flyers On your next promotional flyer include a short quote that promotes your well-earned food hygiene rating, for example... ‘We are proud to say we have achieved the top rating in the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme.’ And remember to include an image of your hygiene rating.

Newspaper advertisement Next time you place an advertisement in your local paper, include a short quote like the one above. It is a simple way of letting regular and new customers know that your business has attained very good standards in food hygiene.

Email If you have a database\* of customers’ email addresses include your hygiene rating as part of your signature whenever you send an email. It’s a subtle way to raise awareness of your rating.

For FHRS images, logos and web banners mentioned in this leaflet visit: food.gov.uk/business-toolkit-fhrs Social media

In a recent survey\*\* 47% of restaurant owners questioned, said that social media was the most important part of their 2012 marketing campaign. With more and more customers using social media you should make the most of the opportunity and use it to promote your top rating.

Facebook

With more than 900 million users, Facebook is a great place for restaurants, cafés and takeaways to promote business. Simply create a page and you can talk with your customers in a number of ways, such as:

• asking questions and seeking input on new dishes and menu items • offering promotions and even the ability to make food orders through your Facebook page

Upload a photo of your hygiene rating sticker in your window and invite your customers to celebrate with you. You can also use it to generate more business by incorporating a promotion, for example:

Twitter

With more than 490 million twitter accounts registered and at least 170 million tweets being sent each day, Twitter provides a number of fantastic ways to interact with your customers, such as:

• tweeting delicious or interesting photos of your food with captions can be a good way to get retweeted • you could also run a simple competition via Twitter, simply upload a photo of your rating sticker and offer a free meal to the first 10 people to retweet it

Instagram

This social photo sharing site has more than 40 million users sharing 58 photos every second and lets you connect with customers on a more visual level, for example by:

• uploading photographs of daily specials • posting photographs of your most mouthwatering dishes • sharing photographs of special in-store promotions and events

Why not start by showing off your signature dish on Instagram with a caption that mentions your top hygiene rating.

\*To build a database of customer’s email addresses you could hold a competition. For example, get them to place their business cards in a bowl and hold a weekly draw to win a meal for two.

\*\*http://nrn.com/social-media/7-social-media-tools-restaurants

‘Since we received our top rating, we’ve been telling all of our customers about it. We have it displayed on our website, in the shop window, use it in our weekly flyers that we post out and have also started talking about it on Facebook. As a result we have been making a lot of pizzas.’

Ishrat Mehdi, restaurant owner